*How to Re-enable fail-over after successful fail-over

Owned by Tom Polman
Last updated: Apr 24, 2023 by Arnout van Wanrooij
3 min read

 

How To Article | HTA-20220531-LG-28

iProtect Access / Security | How To Articles |

 

Recover after successful failover to warm standby.

The virtual IP is still the same, after logging in there will be a warning the system has failed over (Bottom left):

The fail-over mechanism is a one-time mechanism: after a fail-over has occurred the system needs to be reconfigured again to activate this mechanism again.
To enable the warm standby again after the old primary server is repaired, it is best to make the old primary server the backup server.

It is not necessary to set the old primary server as master again, both servers can perfectly serve as primary or backup server, it is very important to check after a failover whether the license needs to be activated.

The procedure for this is:

  1. Add the old primary server as the backup server in iProtect. So in our example:
    192.168.13.10 should be filled in as the Backup server in the Backup tab of
    Installation->Settings->System parameters.

  2. Change the keepalived services on the new primary server in the role Master (the service will already be running and the status will already be master, with this adjustment we ensure that the server is also given the correct priority).



  3. Activate the keepalived services on the backup server in the role backup at the maintenance page of the new backup server (old primary server)



  4. Make a backup on the new primary server. This is automatically transferred to the new backup server
    which becomes the warm standby server


The progress can be monitored via the last transaction in iProtect.

To check if the warm backup process is running correctly, you can check the /home/backup/increment folder on the primary iProtect server. In this folder all changes in the database of the last minute are stored before they are transmitted to the backup server. These files should change every minute.

5. Activate the license on the new primary server

From iProtect 10.01 and higher only 1 license is required, the backup server takes over the license from the primary server, there will be a grace period of 30 days to activate the license.

When activating the keepalived service on the master server the automatic activation of iProtect after booting the server is disabled. This is to prevent problems with 2 running iProtect databases after the master server has been restarted, we can safely assume that the backup server was activated.